IS FANTASY EVEN A GENRE?

You’ve probably encountered many words in English, where you thought: “Sure, I know what that means.” And you do, but some words stay a bit more obscure than others. If I say “tree”, you know exactly what I’m talking about, and even if I say something somewhat more abstract, like “wealth”, you have a good grasp. It means you have lots of money, a nice car. Maybe lots of cows, which is an almost universal symbol of wealth among us humans. But when I say “fantasy”, you probably say: “Sure, I know what that is.” And yet you probably also feel a bit disconnected from the word. Unless you like fantasy literature. But that is maybe part of the problem.

What is art?

Why should you care?

Are men that do art effeminate?

Art comes from the Latin word ars, for which the Greek word is techne. Neither of these words would have conjured the modern concept of “Art” in the minds of the ancient Romans and Greeks as we think of it today. If we want to find another English word that can act as a synonym for what the ancient word ars used to mean, we could use the word “craft”, or even “mastery”. Including the Greek word techne, we could say “technical mastery”.